COLUMN LEFT : Tiny Crack Shows Up in Voters’ Mood : But they have entrusted a mandate for new thinking to bulwarks of the status quo, who have a ‘vision deficit.’

Beneath the inevitable pattern of win ners and losers on Election Day there was a changed voter mood that may shape the politics of the 1990s. The gender barrier finally was broken in gubernatorial politics, and the electorate proved increasingly liberal on social and economic issues, still distrustful of government but willing to selectively earmark its own taxes toward meeting the needs of the future.

The public expects an activist, rather than caretaker, approach from the next Administration. But this was not a mandate for what the public perceives as permissive or big-spending liberalism. The Republican rhetoric on those issues still fits the public mood.

But the voters did approve spending billions on transportation programs, school and university expansion, and new prison construction. They voted not only for long-term bonds, but also took a regressive gas tax upon themselves, the first such action since Proposition 13.

The environmental issue crested to a new power in helping defeat the Republican-sponsored reapportionment initiatives, and in the passage of rail transit measures and protection of wilderness for mountain lions. The environment is sure to be the most powerful issue on the November ballot when voters will decide on “Big Green,” the initiative designed to phase out dangerous toxics in the air, ocean and food supply. It will also be an asset to Dianne Feinstein, who has endorsed the measure, and a probable headache for Pete Wilson, who “supports its goals” but not its provisions.

There is now a crack, if not a window, of opportunity to confront problems that are overwhelming the state. We have slipped from first to worst in the nation in major ways. We spend the least per capita on roads and have the most congested traffic. Only Waikiki has higher housing costs. We have the nation’s most polluted air, overcrowded classrooms, prison inmates and the highest volume of cocaine traffic. The annual death rate from gang violence in Los Angeles now exceeds that of Beirut’s civil war. The electorate is mostly white in a state that is mostly not. A few enjoy life in the fast lane while too many face dead-end futures. Even the middle class, for the first time, believes that the quality of life in California is declining.

Big problems demand big solutions, even bigger than a gender change in the governor’s office, and certainly bigger than passing bond measures to build more off-ramps, prison cells and classrooms to absorb the state’s swelling population. The budget deficit does not compare to our vision deficit. We are building infrastructure without knowing where we are going.

How do we make the transition to a multicultural California, with a better-educated public, a healthy environment and a competitive economy while growing faster than ever? There are no ready answers to a future without precedent.

But we know that old answers will only keep us on the present treadmill. Raising taxes will never keep up with the spiraling costs of administrative bureaucracy. Cutting waste will never generate sufficient savings for new priorities. Unprecedented incentives for long-term solutions will have to be created in both the public and private sectors. A focus on social prevention--of disease, of pollution, of illiteracy and drop-outs--will be needed to control future costs.

The paradox is that voters have entrusted a mandate for new thinking to politicians who tend to be profiles in caution and bulwarks of the status quo, who turn to commissions and polls for solutions. Both gubernatorial candidates tend to be most comfortable as mediators in the middle of the spectrum. All the incentives in politics are toward avoiding the bare truth where it is complicated or controversial.

The challenge in the campaign and beyond will be whether new thinking can break through cobwebbed categories, whether a California perestroika , if you will, can take place in the traditional political order. Or are we already controlled by the political Muzak of sound bites? If so, California will drift into its future, increasingly ungovernable.